Thursday, February 7, 2013

Dueling values at State of the Union -- Feb. 7, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

For his 1965
State of the Union address, Lyndon Johnson tried something new.

Wanting to
reach the largest audience possible, LBJ moved the speech from day to
primetime.

At 9:04 p.m.
on Jan. 4, 1965, before a joint session of Congress, the president laid out his
vision for a Great Society -- including hospital insurance for the elderly, a
voting rights law for African Americans, federal aid for education and an
extension of the minimum wage.

Not to be
outdone, Republicans demanded time for a response, also a first. GOP House
leader Gerald Ford and Senate leader Everett Dirksen did the honors.

Within two
years, most of Johnson’s proposals were law.

Those were
the days. LBJ had just won by a landslide. He knew he had to act fast to get
big things accomplished. His laundry list became marching orders for the
fattest Democratic majority in Congress since the New Deal.

Shortly
after 9 p.m. on Tuesday, President Barack Obama will deliver his State of the
Union address before a joint session of Congress. He knows he has to act fast to
accomplish his goals. He’ll outline a laundry list of legislative priorities. A
Republican response will follow. And that’s where similarities with 1965 end.

Obama will face
a divided, deeply partisan Congress. He’ll expound on how the Democratic values
he talked about in his Inaugural Address translate into policies to strengthen the
middle class. If the last four years are a guide, though, many of his proposals
will go nowhere.

Sen. Marco
Rubio of Florida, a Cuban-American in his first term, will give the Republican
response. Rubio is a fresh face and he’s trying something new: He will speak in
Spanish and English. He’s expected to offer a view of how smaller government,
as championed by the GOP, will help the middle class.

Rubio has a
tough assignment – to hit the reset button on a party that fumbled the last
election. Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana recently called the GOP “the
stupid party” for dumbing down its brand and failing to appeal to minorities. Plus,
Rubio has a lot of hype to live up to. He’s glorified on the cover of this
week’s Time magazine as “The Republican Savior.”

As theater,
the night of dueling values could get interesting.

Obama will
use the bully pulpit to promote job creation, targeting education to job skills,
reducing dependence on foreign oil while promoting green energy, reforming
immigration and reducing gun violence. He wants to increase spending on those
priorities.

At the same
time, the president insists he’s eager for a “big deal” on deficit reduction
that will end the cycle of government by crisis that replays every few weeks or
months.

Obama’s
brand is strong among Democrats after his Inaugural Address in which he set out
liberal themes for his second term, but he has alienated Republicans. The White
House envisioned the two speeches as a package with the State of the Union offering
what former senior Obama adviser David Plouffe called “details and blueprints.”

Obama gave a glimpse of Tuesday’s speech in remarks this week
to House Democrats.

“The question I will ask myself on every
item, every issue is, is this helping to make sure that everybody's got a fair
shot and everybody is doing their fair share and everybody's playing by the
same rules?” he said.

Next month, Obama
is expected to send Congress his budget for the fiscal year that starts in
October.

Despite
Lyndon Johnson’s legendary success, most presidents fail to get what they ask in
the State of the Union speech.

Between 1965
and 2002, on average 43 percent of the policy proposals contained in State of
the Union addresses were enacted by Congress in the legislative session in which
the president gave his speech, Donna R. Hoffman and Alison D. Howard
wrote in the 2006 book “Addressing the State of the Union.”

For second presidential
terms, the success rate drops to 39 percent.

In 2013, the
Democratic president’s State of the Union address will be a wish list. The
Republican response will be one too.